


until the pale sun rises

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Gen, Missing Scene, Weasley family feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 13:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18074315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: Ginny Weasley, rebuilding herself in the wake of Tom Riddle.





	until the pale sun rises

**Author's Note:**

> "On the other hand, Ginny Weasley was perfectly happy again." (Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 18: Dobby's Reward)
> 
> Suuuuuuuuure, JKR. Sure.

Everyone spoke so softly after Ginny was rescued from the Chamber. She hadn’t even been able to get herself out — she was unconscious for the whole bloody battle, carried out like some useless damsel in a romance novel. (A romance novel she hadn’t read. She had definitely not stolen it from her mum. Nope. No romance novels have ever been in the same room as her.)

Everyone spoke so softly, as if they were afraid that speaking normally would break her. Her mum had asked if she wanted to go home early — there were still three weeks of school left, but with exams cancelled, there didn’t seem much point to it. The concept of going home, though, and having to tiptoe around a house where no one spoke above a whisper — no. Ginny wanted to stay here. At least maybe things would go back to normal here. If things went back to normal, Ginny would feel normal, she was sure.

Madam Pomfrey, at least, had been just as brisk as she always was. Gentle, to make sure she didn’t injure Ginny further, but once she established Ginny’s physical injuries (she didn’t understand a lot of the words, but it amounted to needing to take a _lot_ of potions), she didn’t coddle her. Even as Ginny choked down the horrid-tasting potions, she was grateful for that.

She only had to endure her mum’s smothering for three days, but it felt like forever. The first few hours her mum just wept every time she looked at her, holding her and murmuring how much she loved her into her hair. This was comforting for the first five minutes, but after that it became fairly trying, to be honest. Madam Pomfrey clearly saw Ginny’s desire to be anywhere else and told her mum to calm down. Ginny would be perfectly fine as soon as she recovered her strength.

(Ginny did not feel like she would be perfectly fine, but she stayed quiet. The way she couldn’t bear to go to sleep that first night had nothing to do with her strength, and nor did her terror upon waking up the next morning when she couldn’t remember falling asleep. She was haunted by Tom’s voice, the one telling her she was _just a little girl_ , that last time in the Chamber; how he had told her she was so grown up, so competent, so proficient at the tasks he assigned her, and she’d felt so proud of herself and yet—)

It was still a relief to leave the hospital wing and get back into the halls of the castle, where people shouted and shoved and generally acted completely normal, where nobody was looking at her or whispering about her or talking to her in very gentle, quiet tones. Outside her family, Harry and Hermione, and the Hogwarts staff, Ginny had been assured that nobody knew what had happened — what she had done. Anyone who started rumours involving her found themselves on the wrong end of a dungbomb with almost preternatural precision, which presumably deterred others from getting in on the fun. Ginny didn’t need to ask who was doing it.

The third night she woke up, terrified that she would sleepwalk and kill a chicken, she waited in the common room for morning and cornered George as he and Fred were on their way to breakfast. “Could I… ask you for something?” She was sick of being Tom’s useless little girl — she knew that the false sense of maturity had been Tom manipulating her, but the way she couldn’t sleep was Tom too, and she needed him dead.

“Anything for our littlest sister,” Fred said, ruffling her hair. She did not bother to point out the obvious.

“Could you get me a bag of flour?”

Fred and George exchanged a look which stretched into two identical grins before George said, “Are you going into the family business, then? Who are you pranking? A bag of flour is a bit old-fashioned, very Muggle, but sometimes it’s the old ones that are best, you know.”

Ginny flushed and hesitated as other people walked past, but they weren’t paying any attention to three siblings having a conversation. When they were out of earshot, she said, “No, um, I — when — I used to sleepwalk, and I wouldn’t remember it in the morning, and that’s when — well, I want to put the flour around my bed so I know if I’ve left it in the night.” 

There was the briefest of hesitations before Fred said, “We’ll have it to you before dinner.”

When Ginny woke up the next morning to see the undisturbed flour, it was the most relieved she’d felt since this whole thing began. It was undeniable proof that Tom had gone — that she was free. 

A week later, she found Percy just waking up on the sofa facing the girls’ staircase as she came down for breakfast. When she saw him, he froze, looking guilty.

“What are you doing?” she asked. If it had been Fred or George or even Ron, she wouldn’t have questioned it — but Percy still looked as if she’d caught him out in something.

“I’m…” Percy began, and Ginny could tell he was deciding whether or not to tell her the truth. It was a look she was intimately familiar with, being the youngest — people kept trying to “protect her” from “adult business”, as if that had done her any good. She’d been so convinced it couldn’t be her, doing all the terrible things the Heir of Slytherin claimed, because she was just Ginny, her mother’s _little darling_ ; she couldn’t possibly be capable of it. Yet here they were — she was grown-up enough to have nightmares stopping her sleeping, but not grown-up enough to be told the truth about why Percy was sleeping in the common room.

At her responding glare, Percy seemed to make up his mind. “Fred and George organised a rota. One of us sleeps down here to make sure you don’t leave your room during the night. You haven’t, by the way.”

“Oh,” she said, looking at the dark smudges underneath Percy’s eyes. They’d all been staying up late just to make her feel better — and she hadn’t even known. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Percy said, waving a hand. 

She gave him a hug anyway, and after a moment of uncertainty he returned it, stroking her hair for a moment before letting go. “Yes, well, um,” Percy said, clearing his throat. “I should get dressed, then.” He fled, red-faced, and she watched him go, a emotion filling her that was too big for her eleven-year-old heart.

Ginny told herself she wouldn’t take part in any of Fred and George’s pranks on Percy for the whole summer. (By the time the train came rolling into the station and Harry asked what Percy’s secret had been, she’d forgotten. But it was a nice thought.)


End file.
